Cambridge City Council CCTV is celebrating its tenth anniversary shortly.
The public space CCTV system has been nominated for the New Statesman’s New Media Awards 2007 in the ‘contribution to civic society’ category. The way its control room takes texts from the public was last year featured in Professional Security Magazine.<br><br>CCTV manager Martin Beaumont writes: "Our approach has been to use existing mobile telephone technology and in particular its texting capability and combine it with our council’s e-mail system to put an innovative twist into communicating between the public and our CCTV control room. <br><br>Engage and empower<br><br>The objective was to engage and empower the people living and working in the area we cover by encouraging them to take some responsibility in helping to fight crime and anti-social behaviour by giving them the ability to contact CCTV direct and by allowing them to provide information on things that concern them. <br>We believe that this is the first time that this type of interaction between the public and CCTV has been attempted in the UK or anywhere else. <br>Like all good ideas it was simple to set up and cost effective both in terms of money (entire capital cost was £7k) and in the work load, there has been no significant increase in the amount of work CCTV staff are required to do and yet we see a large increase in the flow of information. <br>This initiative has proved to be very popular with the public, media, our other partners and our own council who are considering rolling our texting services to other departments within the council. We have also been assisting other council’s and police forces around the country who are considering setting up similar systems. <br>We believe that this is a good and cost effective use of existing technology and is worthy of your consideration."<br><br>To back this nomination, click on this link to the New Statesman website and scroll down to C for Cambridge:
In April all 12 Cambridge City Council CCTV supervisors and operators gained Divisional Commander Commendations from Cambridgeshire Police. Commendation reads:
"The contribution that the city’s numerous cameras make to community safety when under the control of well-managed and experienced operators is inestimable. The CCTV team is committed to working in partnership. The use of cameras is an essential tool in the prevention and detection of crime as well as the effective management of large-scale events, of which the policing division has many. The Divisional Commander commends (names) for their professionalism, dedication and significant contribution to community safety as an operator of the City Council CCTV team."
